Bonkers Blog February 2013

It’s strange what persuades readers to let their keyboards loose on the
Contact page. When I reported Bexley council’s
failure to provide the public with a report that should have accompanied an
Agenda on Monday and which I considered to be a breach of the Local Government
Act 1985, no one took any notice. But when the public was deprived of the Agenda
for the next Public Cabinet meeting several people got quite agitated about it.
Peculiar when you consider that at best only half a dozen would have turned out
in the cold to attend it.

In the former case democracy itself took a knock, albeit a very small one by
Bexley standards, and in the latter, because of Mr. Barnbrook’s timely
intervention, a dozen councillors were inconvenienced. I have my views on which
is the most significant but the Inbox does not agree. A regular and valued
contributor goes further and suggests I have been far too forgiving of Paul
Moore, the Director of Customer and Corporate Services.

Whilst I do not fully understand the amount of interest shown in this particular
Bexley council failure I shall attempt, if the phrase has not been
totally discredited by a dishonest leader of the
council, to set the record straight with a list of events shorn of comment.
Readers can then draw their own conclusions as to whether or not I have been
hoodwinked by Mr. Moore.

Tuesday 19th February
• 07:00 approx. I first noticed that the Public Cabinet Agenda was not on line. I told
no one but monitored the appropriate page regularly thereafter.Friday 22nd February
• 08:26. Posted blog drawing attention to the Agenda’s absence and made reference to
Mr. Barnbrook. I made no attempt to contact him.
• 13:45. Posted blog announcing that Bexley council had placed the missing Agenda
to its website “around mid-day”.
• 15:10. Mr. Barnbrook telephoned to request that I clarify exactly what I
had guessed he might do.
• 15:30. Mr. Barnbrook failed to contact Mr. Fox by telephone. †
• 15:45. Mr. Barnbrook emailed a Ms. Lingham at the council offices referring
to his “telephone conversation fifteen minutes ago” and went on to reiterate his case
that “the Public Cabinet Meeting scheduled for Monday 25th February, 2013, cannot legally
take place”.
• 16:12. Mr. Barnbrook called me again to say he had phoned Mr. Fox but that he was
not in the office so had sent an email instead.
• 17:10. Mr. Barnbrook attempted to speak to Ms. Lingham again but was told by John
Adams that she was away at an important meeting. He asked that she should call him upon
her return but she never did. †
• 18:07. Mr. Barnbrook informed me by email that he had resent his email
timed at 15:45 because he was concerned the first one had not reached his Sent box.
• 18:27. Mr. Barnbrook phoned me having got cold feet about the legal situation. I
emailed him a link to the relevant legislation.
• 20:44. I telephoned Mr. Bryant on another matter but during that call he informed
me that he believed the Public Cabinet meeting had been postponed to March 4th and that
the Agenda posted at mid-day had been removed.
• 21:24. Posted blog to the effect that the meeting had been deferred and the Agenda
posted around mid-day had been removed.
• 21:44. Mr. Moore emailed Mr. Barnbrook, copied to Mr. Alabi Head of Legal. “The meeting will now take place on Monday 4th
March at 7.30pm. The agenda has been published on the Council’s website this evening.” ††
• 23:57. Mr. Moore emailed me, copied to Mr. Alabi Head of Legal and also from his bexley.gov address to advise me “the agenda for
Public Cabinet on 4th March was published earlier this evening”. †††Saturday 23rd February
• 10:14. I emailed my thanks to Mr. Moore for his advice of the previous evening.

† The timing of this call is approximate. My telephone
records the details of all incoming and outgoing calls. Mr. Barnbrook’s does not
†† Mr. Barnbrook did not make me aware of this email until today. Sunday morning.
It does not thank him for guiding Bexley council away from another brush with the law.
††† This email was not seen until Saturday morning.

I am uncertain whether my search for the Agenda circa 9 p.m. on Friday was
inadequate or whether it didn’t go on line until later. Mr. Moore told
Mr. Barnbrook that it had been posted by quarter to ten and I assume that if it
had gone on line much earlier Ms. Lingham would have told Mick Barnbrook about
it before she went home but she left Mick in the dark..

I try not to go beyond the known facts when writing blogs and as such I have no
knowledge of how Bexley council came to make this mistake or if it was not a
mistake but had some ulterior motive. The facts are only that Bexley council did
not publish an Agenda in the timescale required by law. There is no doubt about
that and they deferred their meeting and provided an Agenda at the very last
possible moment without apology or explanation.

The most obvious explanation is that the council moved its meeting because Mr. Barnbrook made it
clear he expected the law to be upheld. It has been suggested that the decision
to move the meeting to 4th March was taken a while ago and the real failure was
not updating the Calendar of Meetings. Publishing an Agenda for 25th February on
the 22nd rather puts paid to that theory. “If they have made a cock-up,
why don't they acknowledge it and thank Mr. Barnbrook for bringing it to their
attention?” says another inquisitor. What? I would have thought any council
officer who goes on the record for thanking Mick Barnbrook for anything will risk
kissing his pension goodbye! “Please don’t be seduced by Mr. Moore” says another.
Probably good advice. John Watson of the Bexley Council Monitoring Group has
been in pursuit of Bexley council for far longer than I have and constantly
reminds me that they are “all cheats and liars”. My meetings with Bexley police
should have taught me that.

Apologies to those who think this is all rather dry and academic stuff, but the
number of comments, some anonymous, persuaded me that all the known facts should
be made available to those who require them.